New commenter Punditius* proposes that biblical submission is an artifact of the times in which the New Testament was written:

As a man in a marriage to a woman (sigh, that has to be said these days), both much better than I deserve, I have to say that I have trouble following this notion that a woman must be submissive to her husband. My own experience is that what is required of both husband and wife is good faith in each other’s intentions. The idea of “submissiveness” strikes me as an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in, and I suspect that as with much of what Jesus and his disciples said, it contains a truth that is deeper than the superficial seeming. There is something else going on here, covered up by a veneer of ancient custom. I confess that I don’t know what it is. Still working on that.

The problem with the “rooted in the times” theory is the texts are very specific that this is eternal. In 1 Pet 3:3-5 Peter tells us wives should be submissive because this is beautiful to God:

3 Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— 4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. 5 For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands,

God isn’t influenced by our fashion trends. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Clothes, hairstyles, and jewelry are all subject to the whim of fashion; Peter is telling Christian women to not get caught up in the fashion of the day and instead focus on what is eternal.

Then in the next verse (6), Peter tells us this is timeless once again by tying this back to Genesis and the original covenant with Abraham:

6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.

There are other problems with this theory, including Paul’s explanation of the husband-wife relationship being a mirror to the relationship between Christ and the Church in Ephesians.

What is undeniable is that someone is/was being influenced by their times. The only question is who. It is either God, Peter, and Paul, who were following the fashion of the day and overlooking what is eternally true, or us who are overlooking what is eternal because we are blinded by the customs of our time.

*Welcome Punditius, and welcome Instapundit readers who were referred to the previous post.

Well – Bible verses only confirm what we observe in real life. Submissiveness turns women on and they actually enjoy to submit despite claiming otherwise. So it’s not a bad thing – the Bible speaks the truth and female submission is the way to go for any kind of male-female relationship. If she cannot submit, she will be unhappy and resent the man more.

It is truly amazing the lengths to which people will go to avoid seeing (and/or to explain away) what is plainly written in the text. What Punditus believes in is the diametric opposite of what the actual biblical text is saying…but he is “still working” on it. Anything to avoid actually coming to terms with how widely divergent his own views are from the text. Astonishing.

“The idea of “submissiveness” strikes me as an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in”

Would this society be tribal/agrarian Israel or the cosmopolitan Roman Empire? The Bible spans both and doesn’t appear to have suffered for it over the last two millenia. Peter was a subsistence fisherman and Paul a college-educated Elite. They got along.

The most simplistic analysis confirms the wisdom of Biblical submission. A marriage is composed of two people. For them to act as a single unit, one of them must be the acknowledged tie-breaker. If God’s Word is not enough to confirm the man as the tie-breaker then surely our modern experience of how women behave when they’re in charge should be convincing.

Dalrock, I noticed that Punditius didn’t your address your very good point about people thinking the submit command to wives is outdated, whereas the love command to husbands (which as you noted, is itself misunderstood, as exemplified by Caleb Suko’s blog post) is still in full-effect.

1 Timothy 2:11-14 “Let a woman learn in silence with all SUBMISSION. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. ”
WHY you ask… Wait for it….
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. ”

So the requirement of submission is founded upon creation and the fall. Not one hint of cultural tradition or the “times”. Punditius – FAIL!

” It is either God, Peter, and Paul, who were following the fashion of the day and overlooking what is eternally true, or us who are overlooking what is eternal because we are blinded by the customs of our time.”

I notice when dealing with the topic of submission many clerics like to ‘cherry pick’ a list of women from obscure old Testament saints and put these forward as examples for our modern christian women. This is done while ignoring the actual New Testament example of Sarah. Watching them dance around the subject is truly both disappointing and strangely entertaining.

I have to disagree for a very simple reason – men and women are EXACTLY what the other finds attractive – and for men that is strength, drive, power, and for women it is beauty, nuturing, and submission – since there can be only ONE leader is a group, and 2 is the smallest group you can have. So you need a leader (the man) and a follower (the woman) – simple. And our hormones enforce that – but it is the need that drove the evolution of the hormones not the other way around.

Men are the actors – women are the acted upon. People can say it’s not so, but it doesn’t change the facts. Liberals are very good at trying to hide reality – but they can’t even if they try to destroy you for saying so. I remember once being at a bar and a woman stated she was the equal of any man there – one of the guys in my group took her up on it, and held her with one hand while continuing to do what he wanted. Eventually sat her on his lap. Of course Feminists and Liberals hate reality – doesn’t make it any less real, just makes them deny, deny, deny…

Women are submissive – those that try to pretend otherwise are unhappy in life – those that embrace it and are “feminine” are happy. Hey, I didn’t make the rules – but I acknowledge reality – plain and simple… I leave denial to the liberals…

@Don Q
In Biblical hermeneutics, the best practices include :precept interprets the narrative, from the most clear passages to limit and interpret the more ambiguous ones. Clear commands like “wives submit to your husbands as to Christ” restrict the scope of any biblical narratives as a normative ethic.

” It is either God, Peter, and Paul, who were following the fashion of the day and overlooking what is eternally true, or us who are overlooking what is eternal because we are blinded by the customs of our time.”

Exactly.

It’s God who created us so God has the idea how we operate. Listening to the Zeitgeist will only complicate something that was meant to be simple.

Fellas, ever pick up a romance novel and breeze through? I’m not recommending making a hobby out of it but you can learn a lot about women’s desires there. When I was a kid I did time in the company of many nurses, Mom was an RN. The first thing I learned carousing chick porn was that women have very sexually explicit minds and romance novels are punctuated with intense, sexually explicit encounters. More important though is who they want that sex with. Women ultimately desire men who are the absolute opposite of egalitarian, ‘mutually submissive’, passive, sweeties. You’ll never read or see an erotic romance marketed to women in which the focus of desire is a ‘nice’, chivalrous, sensitive, caring hipster. Never going to happen. Women want to be taken, they’ll almost never say it but thats what they want.

Cut Punditus a little slack here. He’s been entrenched in the same feminist, chivalrous claptrap the rest of us were brainwashed on from pop culture and her sister, the modern church.

You can learn a lot more about women from the Bible than from a romance novel. The reason they don’t desire the egalitarian men is because God said she would desire her husband and he would rule her. Therefore God made it this way for both man and woman in marriage. Going against this leads to weak leadership in men and women with no desire.

Cut Punditus a little slack here. He’s been entrenched in the same feminist, chivalrous claptrap the rest of us were brainwashed on from pop culture and her sister, the modern church.

I thank these blogs for the deprogramming they’ve helped me go through over the past several months. I’m not married, but in my thoughts, I’ve resorted to the same type of pedestalization of women with whom I’ve been infatuated that he did concerning his wife when said, “As a man in a marriage to a woman…both much better than I deserve.” Multiple times I’ve thought to myself concerning women in whom I’ve been interested that they were just too good for me, that I didn’t deserve someone like them. After reading these blogs and realizing how often we pedastalize women with the “women good, men bad,” mentality in our society, I’ve taken on a whole new perspective.

Now, it’s true we don’t “deserve” anything per se, as thinking we do would be indicative of an entitlement mentality, but if we have to bring up the fact that we don’t deserve a certain woman, then we’ve likely swallowed years of bad programming, maybe of our own creation, due to low self-esteem, but feminized churches and leaders haven’t helped. In Punditius’ case, perhaps he really did get better than what he “deserved” (for lack of a better word) regarding his wife and marriage, but the part of his post where he mentioned that stood out to me, because of how familiar it seems.

If a woman’s obedience to God regarding being in submission to her husband were an “artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in”, it wouldn’t make sense for the evidence of a spiritual transformation to exist within the women who turn from rebellion today. Yet, for me personally (and I’m willing to bet something similar is true for many of the women who comment here like seriouslyserving, Subject By Design, Dragonfly, lgrobins etc.), I experienced something that is very difficult to describe – like describing what someone experiences when they first accept Christ as their Savior. My fear lessened, my heart was calmed, my anxiety decreased, and I began to feel the difference between happiness and joyfulness.

Leading up to this commitment, I was struggling with fear, anxiety, sadness, and an unsettled heart. I started asking friends and family members if they were suffering with these things. I was naive at the time and in that naivety, shocked at just how many women in my life were on prescription medications for these conditions already. I started learning which meds do what and which ones might help me. I did not want to feel this way anymore and was desperately searching for relief. I was afraid of the drugs, though, because of how emotionless some of these women seemed. They weren’t joyful, they were just…meh. I didn’t want to be numb, I wanted to have calm and joy.

Earl: How can it be that a bunch of stuff written in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago would dovetail so perfectly with the conclusions of a bunch of mostly atheist PUA’s blogging about their conquests? Weird.

@OP: It’s an artifact of the times all right. The importance of teaching female submission and male dominance/headship could not be MORE important in this precise artifact ridden and increasingly deviant culture of ours.

The women in the 1st Century immediately took over many churches and had to be restrained. I am hard pressed to imagine how the apostles could have been more clear about the marriage headship rules but imagine them trying to deal with women today!

‘How can it be that a bunch of stuff written in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago would dovetail so perfectly with the conclusions of a bunch of mostly atheist PUA’s blogging about their conquests?’

Or how could celibate priests, bishops, and Popes have a better idea how sex works between a man and woman than those who are experienced with it. Because the knowledge is universal.

Jesus told us to do it in love. Yet I see no “love” other then a bunch of gammas and omegas sitting around a blog. Where they can complain about feminism running rampant through Christianity. Yet they will not take their message to the church. Paul told timothy to do the work of an evangelist. But you guys sit on your butt and complain about them. This is why they are running rampant. Because you would rather complain about them then do anything. I think the blog should be called “The Salon”. Since all you do is complain and don’t put boots on the ground.

“Earl: How can it be that a bunch of stuff written in Hebrew and Greek thousands of years ago would dovetail so perfectly with the conclusions of a bunch of mostly atheist PUA’s blogging about their conquests? Weird.”

“As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.” Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.”

I think the blog should be called “The Salon”. Since all you do is complain and don’t put boots on the ground.

This is a critical theory blog, not a clickbait site. There’s as much hard sociology here as there is in a lot of peer-reviewed journals, and most of it is supported with better data, also.

In order to be effective in society, men need to hone their arguments and practice communicating rhetorically. Your advice to “just give up, you’ve already lost” sounds like the message feminists would spread, if they were bright enough to do competent disinformation (they’re not — they just rely on penis size and mom’s basement insults).

Josh – Some of us (maybe most of the folks here) have made a difference at our churches and in the lives of the people we interact with. How can you possibly know other wise? If you are going to hang out around these parts, you need to grow some thicker skin.

“History and the study of cultures do not teach or prove that values or cultures are relative. All to the contrary, that is a philosophical premise that we now bring to our study of them. This premise is unproven and dogmatically asserted for what are largely political reasons… Yet the fact that there have been different opinions about good and bad in different times and places in no way proves that none is true or superior to others….

Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled.”

I asked a similar question to Fr Joseph Gleason (Western Rite Orthodox) about “culture” and first century norms in the context of the modernist interpretation of EPH 5:21. Bear with me, I will cut and post the salient points:

Fr–I wonder if you might take the time to help me understand a problem that arose in the thread on headship/submission that is now closed. It is a problem created, in my opinion by confusion over the proper contextual application of EPH 5:21. It is my contention that modernity has crept into the RC and Protestant Christian churches by the misuse of this single passage, and pretending that it offers the context, or worse a sort of negation of what follows (5:22–ff).

I pray that this sickness will not ever completely infiltrate Orthodoxy.

It is hermeneutically sound, when trying to understand what the scripture says/teaches about a particular subject to take ALL the text about that topic and use them to add and illuminate, correct?

It is ALSO sound to acknowledge that inspired scripture never contradicts itself. If an apparent contradiction is found, the problem is human error (the person, the translation, etc) not the text.

Therefore, in order for EPH 5:21 to somehow mean what many modernists commonly believe it means, EVERYTHING ELSE the text has to say on the matter of headship must be incorrect. (Or must be explained away as “cultural” or “for the first century only”) This understanding violates BOTH principles of interpretation mentioned above. Those who argue that “mutual submission” somehow means “egalitarian 50/50 partnership in marriage” are suggesting that 5:21 offers the context for 5:22 and following. But one does not have to do the tremendous amount of mental gymnastics to ignore all the other passages in the Bible about headship if they simply take 5:21 to be the conclusion of the previous section. 5:22 is at the beginning of a NEW section, about marriage, where 5:21 is the END of a section about how Christians should defer to each other in general.

Is my read of this sound?

As always, let us pray for illumination.

(Fr Gleason responds): Scott, thank you for your question.

I think most of what you say here is correct. I agree that many people try to make Ephesians 5:21 say more than it actually does. There is a certain level of mutual submission all Christians are supposed to give one another. But if we raise that to the point of espousing an “egalitarian 50/50” version of marriage, we go way too far. That view would contradict much of what St. Paul says in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and Titus 2. It would also contradict what St. Peter says in 1 Peter 3.

However, in the original Greek, the division between Ephesians 5:21 and 5:22 is not as stark as it may appear in English. In fact, the word “submit” does not even exist in verse 22, in Greek. It actually looks like this:

5:21 submitting to one another in the fear of Christ,
5:22 wives, to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Grammatically, verse 5:22 is dependent on verse 5:21. As a subset of Christians mutually submitting to one another, wives are to submit to their own husbands as unto the Lord.

That does not equal egalitarianism, though.
Such a suggestion would be a stretch.

(me): That is fascinating. So if I am understanding correctly, based on that progression, it is more accurate to conceptualize the entire passage as being about submission in general that moves into the more specific married version of it?

(One more from him): I believe the passage is primarily about being filled with the Holy Spirit (v. 18), which is manifested by speaking the Psalms (v. 19), making melody in your heart (v. 19), giving thanks always (v. 20), and submitting to one another (v. 21). In general, these are the things that Spirit-filled Christians do.

Then verses 22-24 are a subset of verse 21. In addition to the normal submitting “to one another” that is done among all Christians, wives have a particular responsibility to submit to their own husbands, in everything, as to the Lord.

These three qualifiers are significant:

* A wife submits to “her own husband”, not to all men in general. For example, your wife does not have to submit to me, nor does my wife have to submit to you. Women in general do *not* have to submit to men in general.

* A wife submits to her own husband “in everything”. There is no other person on earth she is required to submit to “in everything”. That is a unique level of submission that she gives to her husband alone.

* A wife submits to her own husband “as to the Lord”. This echoes 1 Peter 3, where St. Peter instructs godly wives to be daughters of Sarah, and to call their own husbands “Lord”.

Scripture does not instruct husbands to submit to their own wives “in all things”, nor does it instruct them to submit to their wives “as to the Lord”. The gender roles within marriage are very well defined. The husband leads, and the wife follows.

Thankfully, St. Paul does not stop at verse 24. Now that he has made a segue into the mystery of Christian marriage, he completes his thought by also talking about the husband’s enormous responsibilities. In verse 25, he says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her . . .”

The husband is duty-bound to love his wife, with the greatest love that one human being can possibly give to another. The husband is to live in self-sacrifice, giving of himself for the good of his wife, doing whatever is within his power to sanctify his wife, and draw her ever closer to the Lord. If the situation calls for it, the husband is to sacrifice his own life in order to protect her.

St. Paul then spends a few verses emphasizing the way that marriage reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Then he completes this subsection by summing up some of the central marriage relationship responsibilities: “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Then, in the next few verses, St. Paul moves on to another area of the family, and talks about how parents and children are supposed to relate to one another.

All of this falls under the heading of the command in verse 18 to “be filled with the Spirit”. This is what Spirit-filled living looks like:
* between every Christian in general (vv. 19-21)
* between husbands and wives (vv. 22-34)
* between parents and children (first verses of chapter 6)

“Yet they will not take their message to the church.” Huh? Don’t people at church have the internet?
I used to go to local churches before I realized they were apostate. The more I read my bible the more I became disillusioned with the failures in the pulpits regarding marriage and many other fundamental issues. So what started me on this journey to the truth? Blogs and like this one. People are filling up mega churches because they are flattered there, especially if they’re women. Women don’t want this message. Those who seek the truth will find it, those who don’t follow will Joel Osteen.

@Josh
It’s my experience that often the changes first take place within a person. And hanging around here, with like-minded believers, helps to solidify and encourage those changes.
Personally, I have also started challenging the status quo in small ways, as the opportunities present themselves. For example, emailing a marriage blogger who I thought was encouraging wives to be disrespectful. Or speaking up in a women’s Bible study about marriage.
Many others here are probably doing similar (or bigger) things – just because you don’t hear about it, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

P.S. I have a great flouncing dress you can borrow for next time. A real head-turner!

Jesus told us to do it in love. Yet I see no “love” other then a bunch of gammas and omegas sitting around a blog. Where they can complain about feminism running rampant through Christianity. Yet they will not take their message to the church. Paul told timothy to do the work of an evangelist. But you guys sit on your butt and complain about them. This is why they are running rampant. Because you would rather complain about them then do anything. I think the blog should be called “The Salon”. Since all you do is complain and don’t put boots on the ground.

There’s so much wrong with this post. I’ll address them one at a time.

1) Love – You speak about love and then categorize people as “omegas” and “gammas.” If you had all the information about people’s lives, you might be able to categorize people, but you’re going off a few words on a screen. However, telling the truth is loving, and while Dalrock isn’t perfect, and I don’t agree with him 100%, he does reveal truth where many others do not. The same goes for some of the bloggers and commenters.
2) Audience – You’re not addressing anyone in particular. If you’re going to attack someone’s argument or even someone’s character, at least address that person, or else your argument (if you want to call it that), doesn’t really have any practical application.
3) Complaining – You mention people sitting on their butts and complaining to which you devise a complaint about their complaints.
4) Time – It takes time to carry truth to the body. Are we supposed to despise small beginnings?
5) Presumption – I’d like to know where you obtained your mind-reading abilities to know what people are doing in their local churches and communities.

“The idea of “submissiveness” strikes me as an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in”

The phrase “strikes me” seems appropriately subjective, and at the same time weak enough to attract hyenas from 10 miles away. It strikes me that being bombarded by “modern” feminist propaganda since birth might have this affect on a person. I invert the Evangelical feminist question, where did all the “good” men go?

I would second JDG’s comment. Honing thoughts is a key part of growing.

Kind of funny Josh that you griped about being confronted and then acted like a total dweeb yourself. Must be projection on your part. Perhaps you need to really start doing more yourself. Maybe you would feel better about yourself then and not need to attach people you have just met (virtually).

@Scott
I read your post above with great interest. It is my understanding that the King James version and the English Standard version are both word for word translations and yet the word “submit” in verse 22 is in both of these with no indication that it is not there in the original. The ESV separates verse 21 from verse 22 by beginning a new section at verse 22. I read the English translation from the Greek in your post and was immediately struck by the fact that it does read a little differently without the word “submit” in verse 22, e.g. it moves from the general to the specific. I personally think that it reads better and the meaning is clearer without the added word.

@Josh- The internet Blogger meme is a rehashed insult, and lacking in originality. Say what you truly mean.

I myself belong to a group of younger men who grew up in this culture. All of my Cohort have rejected the American Popular Church notion of marriage. Nine of us married virgin wives, many of our wives were so inexperienced that their first kiss occurred at the altar. Nor are we some kind of backwoods cult. We work in a state capitol as its policemen,firemen, nurses, teachers, and Mid level managers for major corporations.

We all would ascribe to the definition of headship that is put forward in God’s word, that we as husbands are responsible for our wives as the head of the home, and that our wives are responsible to follow that leadership and submit.

I say this because the word is true, Christ IS building his church regardless of the ways of the current culture. Those who belong to Him will follow and obey, and do exist.

The idea of “submissiveness” strikes me as an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in…

If one proceeds further with that quote in mind, Christianity itself is also “an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in.” Therefore, if the temporal context discredits the idea, it also discredits the entire faith.

“As a man in a marriage to a woman (sigh, that has to be said these days), both much better than I deserve, I have to say that I have trouble following this notion that a woman must be submissive to her husband. My own experience is that what is required of both husband and wife is good faith in each other’s intentions. The idea of “submissiveness” strikes me as an artifact of the society Christianity was rooted in, and I suspect that as with much of what Jesus and his disciples said, it contains a truth that is deeper than the superficial seeming. There is something else going on here, covered up by a veneer of ancient custom. I confess that I don’t know what it is. Still working on that.”

This guy is just another weak and pathetic pussy licker. His religion is not Christianity. It’s feminism.